CHAPTER XXXV

THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE

Once more in Eastcheap with Falstaff--and this I think will be the last time. I thought that by getting there before the first tide was down, I might see him come rolling up to his old haunts, to "take his ease in his inn," nor in this, I think, shall I be disappointed. His rock will soon be ready for him. Already he has come to it, swum about it, lain upon it--though it is still under the waves--and then, gliding slowly and smoothly away, has dived almost perpendicularly down, following its seaweed-clad sides, till lost to sight. Now, this last time, he seems come to it to stay. The way he expatiates upon it is delightful to see. Such great yawns, such stretchings, heavings, and throwings back of the head, with supple curvings of the neck! such luxurious anticipations of repose to come, and oh, such sleekness, such glistening! How intensely he enjoys this rest of his, his long intertidal sleep! He was not asleep when he came (it would not have surprised me if he had been), but now, as he lies at length, rolling, a little, with the waves that ripple about him, the eyes begin to close, and even when he throws back his head and opens his jaws, as he does often, they are shut, I think, or almost shut. Often he scratches his chin with one of his flippers, or passes it, indolently, all over his face.

I was right, I think, about the fore-feet. They are certainly more elongated and fin-like than in the common seal, but, which is curious, neither they nor his hind ones seem to me so large, in proportion to his size, as they are in the latter species. The tail, if not lengthened, looks broadened, and it is fringed with hair round the edges. Though the shape is oval, it reminds me of the last joint of a lobster's tail. Perhaps, therefore, it may be an aid to the feet in swimming. In the fold of skin between the two hind feet, there is something which I, at first, thought was a mussel, but am now not so sure about. In colour and sheen it answers perfectly, but now looks more like something membranous, hanging down on one side. There is something peculiar in two of the toes of the left front flipper--which is the one I see. Three out of the five claws are black, but the second and third--counting from the marginal one which lies towards the chest, are, if it is really the claws--white or whitish, and visible only to about half the length of the others, the rest of them being hidden by hair or fur. These claws have a peculiar rough, irregular appearance, different from the others, which seem smooth and shapely. The whiskers, which are white, are both long and thick. They are often shot out, so as to project almost straight forwards, and then brought back to their usual position, where they droop parallel with the line of the head and throat. The great blubbery lips from which they spring are thick and swollen, and have a soft, cushiony appearance. Here, no doubt, we have a very sensitive apparatus, of great use to the animal. The eyebrows seem represented either by three, or four, projecting hairs, like those of the whiskers, but shorter. One, however, is greatly longer than the other two--or three.

I have now noted all I can about this creature, which, I think, must be a female. Can it be the unmarked spouse of the great sea-leopard which was here once, but which I have never seen again? Both were in the pool together, and often quite near to one another, and, with the exception of their very different skins, looked very much the same animal. Though they did not converse, or frolic, with one another, yet I thought their very indifference had something conjugal about it--but this may have been imagination. But if they are really male and female of the same species, it seems curious that there should have been so much difference in the time that each remained under water. Of this, alone, I can be sure, that on one occasion, only, I saw at close quarters, and for a long time, a seal twice as large as the common one, and with a most magnificent skin, for which, and no other, reason I have called it the sea-leopard, not at all knowing its proper name.

The substance on the large seal's tail, which puzzled me, is, I think, connected with the parts adjoining, and this makes me conclude it to be a female, and that it may lately have had a young one, which, however, I have never seen with it. I can make out no very special development of the nose--longer and larger than that of the common seal, but I mean _as_ a nose--so that if the name bottle-nosed is really applied to the creature--and one Shetlander certainly used it--it must be, I think, for the reason I have conjectured, the very round apertures of the nostrils, which look as if they would just hold a cork. I could never have imagined that an animal having fur--and pretty thick fur, I think--all over it, would look so absolutely naked in the water as this seal does. I noted down that it was, without the smallest suspicion of a doubt having occurred to me, and I remained in entire ignorance of the real fact till I saw it with the fur partly dry. Once, indeed, I noticed something--the least hint of a roughness on the shoulders--as it bent its neck; but I never really doubted, so naked did it everywhere appear. There is really some interest in letting one's errors stand; besides that it does not seem quite fair to suppress them.

Seals have strong preferences, not only for particular rocks, but for particular places upon them. A large one of the common kind but just now came out on a rock where five others were lying, and advanced through them, in a straight line, displacing four of them. One only of these seemed inclined to dispute his passage, and here there was some scratching, with a good deal of hoarse snarling, almost barking--an ugly guttural note. The large seal seemed not to wish to bring things "_à de fâcheuses extrémités_." He would pause, with a deprecating look, but without giving way one inch, and, very shortly, press forward again, the other snarling and scratching as before, but gradually retiring, till at last he gave "passage free." The fifth seal lay at right the end of the rock, where it narrowed very much, so that there was no retreat for it, as the large one came up--for that was just the place he wanted--except into the sea. And there, after many snarls, and growls, and faint shows of resistance, as, also, most melancholy looks, it had to go, the intruder, all the while, continuing to use that deprecating, almost apologetic, manner which he had done throughout. It was disagreeable to him to be at feud with any of his kind, but, still more so, not to have the place he liked; that was the idea quite transparently expressed. There was that in his manner which seemed to say, "With the sole exception of myself, madam, there is no one for whose rights I have a more profound respect than for yours"; for, this ousted seal being a small one, I put her down as a lady. Perhaps, indeed, that is why he was so forbearing.

Several seals are now playing a good deal in the water, flouncing and bouncing about, making little white cauldrons, in the midst of which their round, black heads, bobbing up and down, look like pipkins, or crabs a-roasting. Two are sporting together in this way, which is a very pretty sight to see. They spin and shoot about, slap each other with their fins or tails, and, every now and again, one hears a curious burst of sound, like subaqueous thunder; whether caused by the swirl, as they go down, or being a growl, half-choked under the water, I do not know. Seals seem to lead a most happy life. I have mentioned one leaping out of the water, as it went along, in pure enjoyment--for what else could it have been? But how different is all this to the lonely sleep of that great thing yonder!--Falstaff--Proteus--Bottle-nose--but that last is a calumny on a very respectable feature. There is no real contrast, however. The common kind often sleep their leesome lane. With the play it may be different. I have not seen the great seal sportive.

A _phoca_ has just come up with something white in its mouth, which it is eating--a fish, no doubt. This, too, it does in a playful manner, flinging open its jaws, and seeming to disport with it, in them. Full of the enjoyment of life they are; and the way up, through evolution, is to leave all this, and to acquire a multitude of cares, with gluttony, diseases, vices, cant--with a pat on the back from a poet, or so, now and again, making us out to be gods, and telling us to go to war. A queer scheme, "a miserable world," as Jacques says--but not for seals. Except through us, that is to say. We do skin them alive, which raises another point. Not only is man--highly civilised man--the most miserable being that exists, or has ever existed, upon this planet, but it is through him, for the most part, that the robe of misery has been flung down upon every other being that shares it with him. He plays, in fact, the part of a devil in nature, but because his fellow-beings are below himself in intelligence, he is not ashamed of this. Were he, however, to be treated in a similar way by some species as superior, mentally, to himself, as he is to animals, he might see the matter differently.

Does right exist at all, then, as apart from might? That which does not rest upon some active principle in the scheme of nature, does not, really, exist. We only fancy it, and thereby are only the more shocked at the continual negation of what we fancy. In nature there is no law of right, only of might, but, as man develops, he becomes, gradually, aware that the cruel exercise of this might does not always lead to the best results. Therefore, he exercises it more mercifully, and, in doing so, thinks that he acts according to the law of right, as against that of might, whereas what he really does is to carry out the law of might in a more judicious manner. The idea that animals have rights, in regard to us, has, for me, no meaning. How can they have what they cannot conceive of having? If they have, so must vegetables. Whenever they enforce something against us, it is through might that they do it, and this might we have, in a greater degree, over them. The whole question is how, in the highest sense, it is best to exercise it. For the idea of right, therefore, I would substitute that of might, judiciously exercised, as the highest ideal that is in accordance with the scheme of nature. All improvement, I believe, in the history of mankind--with the case against vivisection, now--can be reduced to that principle; the other is a delusion. The only right that nature knows anything about is the right which she has conferred on every creature, to do whatever it is strong enough to do--and that is might. But when might is well guided, all is well.

There is a puffin, now, within a few feet of me, with the largest fish I have yet seen one carrying; as large as a Cornish sardine, and that is as large as can possibly pass for one. And yet it has several smaller ones in its bill, besides. How is this done? For, to catch the big fish, it must have opened the beak a good deal. That one, however, is right at the base of the bill, as though it had been caught first. This, I think, supports my ideas as to the _modus operandi_. I do not see how so large a fish could be caught, without letting out any little ones that had gone before it. But if it were caught first, the beak, which can cut into the body, to the bird's convenience, need not be opened more widely, on the next occasion, than it would be if it held only a small fish. Did the big fish occupy any other position in the bill than that which it does, it would be against my theory; situated as it is, it is for it. Pray heaven, then, I don't see another puffin with a big fish!--for it may be held differently.

I have now seen, more _in extenso_, another young kittiwake killed by a herring-gull. Herring-gulls are much more numerous here than even the lesser black-backed, which is the reason, I suppose, why they seem to stand out in this character. I do not mean to brand them specially, or, indeed, at all. (Why cannot it be recognised that to blame any one, for anything, is to blame the Deity?) It is gull nature, and that is not the worst kind, after all. Though I did not see the actual commencement of this affair, I must have all but seen it, as a party of young kittiwakes that had been bathing near the ledges flew up all at once, and this I have no doubt was when the attack was made. Immediately afterwards, I saw the gull mauling and throttling one of them, in the way I have before described. I feel sure that if it had swooped to the attack, like a hawk, I must have seen it, and therefore I have no doubt it had been swimming amongst the troop, at the time, for only yesterday I had noticed two herring-gulls within a few feet of some young kittiwakes on the water, without the latter seeming to be in the least alarmed. Probably these gulls--whose plumage, by the way, a good deal resembles that of the adult kittiwake--swim quietly amongst them, and, all at once, seize on one. This poor little thing struggled, as well as it could, with its destroyer, and, several times, got loose and began to fly away; but the gull was after it, and caught it, again, before it had risen above a foot from the water. As before (or nearly) it seized it by the throat, near the head, and then kept compressing the part between its strong mandibles. It was some minutes--perhaps five, perhaps longer--before the kittiwake was floating, breast upwards, on the water, and being disembowelled--a horrid sight. Yet this gull could not have been very hungry, for he allowed another one--no doubt his partner--to approach and eat with him. A young gull was vigorously chased away, not by him, but by this other bird, who never let it come near. Neither was the favoured gull really hungry, for, very soon, the body was abandoned by both the birds, and then fell to two others, a young and an old one. Here, too, the old bird would no doubt have driven the young one away if its appetite had been at all keen. Probably they had all been kittiwaking in the earlier morning, and were now fairly sated. But all animals that live by killing--taking life in a chasing way--are sportsmen; they enjoy the killing, that is to say, for its own sake. I can see no difference, here, between the animal sportsman and the human one. Manifestly there is none, for no one, I suppose, with a brain in his head, can be led astray by all that irrelevant insistence on unessential distinctions, with which sportsmen seek to disguise the real nature of their ignoble pleasure--law, grace, close-time, and all the rest of it--differentiating themselves, to their own satisfaction, not only from their fellow beasts of prey, but from poachers, with whom they are essentially one, but for whom a far better case can be made out than for themselves.

What makes, or helps to make, these scenes so very unpleasant, is the prosaic and unimposing manner in which the gull goes to work. We have, here, no swoop and rush of wings, from giddy heights, as in the falcon tribe; there is no dilating of the plumage, no eloquent expression of the fiercer emotions; no fine embodiment of speed, power, rage, combined, is presented to us, nor does the victim lie, in an instant, prostrate and bleeding beneath the claws of its destroyer. Such sights make fine pictures. They personify, in a grand and striking way, our ideas of the inevitable and irresistible--of fate, clothed in terror. There is something in them of the old Greek drama, nay, of our _real_ conceptions--drawn from nature and the Old Testament--of the Deity. But here there is nothing of all this--no impetuosity, and not enough strength or mastery to give a sense of power, at least not of mighty power. Structurally the gull is not specially fitted, nor, in general appearance, does he look fitted, for the part he is acting, and this, as is usual, gives something of a bungling appearance to his handiwork. Above all, he lacks fire, and this makes one doubly alive to the cruelty, which is not so disagreeably felt in witnessing the fierce thunder-bolts of a true bird or beast of prey. There it is masked, so to speak, under "the power and the glory," but here we see only a sordid and cold-blooded murder, unrelieved by any feature of special interest even, much less by any apparently ennobling element. As a spectacle, it compares very unfavourably with that of snakes killing their prey, and equally, or even more so, from the intellectual point of view. For with snakes we have a special, and very marvellous, adaptation to a certain end, which arouses admiration in a high degree in one direction, even though it may excite disgust in another. On the whole--to me, at least, who am a naturalist, with the curiosity proper to one strongly developed--there is far more of wonder and instruction, than of horror, in the scene, unless, indeed, the sufferings of the victim are prolonged, which is by no means always the case. Some of the smaller constrictors, for instance, will dart upon, and twist one or two of the first neck-coils round a rat, or other small mammal, with such lightning-like speed and dexterity, and with such tremendous strength, that death--as shown by the relaxation of the muscles, and hanging down of the limbs--is almost instantaneous, and the effect upon the mind comparable to that which would be produced by the stoop of an eagle, or the spring of a tiger. We are impressed by the speed and power, and have to admire the amazing ingenuity--one may even say the beauty--of the structural adaptation; for, after all, one should have an intellect, as well as a heart. This would soon pass into more distressing sensations, were the rat long a-killing; but in the cases to which I refer it is very soon over. The bowstring in a Turkish harem must be a lengthy process in comparison. Thus the balance of our emotions produces, or should produce, the exclamation, "How wonderful!" rather than the one, "How horrible!" but with the gull and kittiwake, only the latter is possible. Do I, then, defend the feeding of snakes with their ordinary living prey, in captivity? Yes, I do, so long as the conditions of nature are properly preserved. I would make that the test. If it is not permissible to study the living habits of the living animal, to stand as a spectator and see how nature works, then there is no such thing as natural history, and no place for a naturalist. What naturalist is there who would not esteem himself favoured of heaven, were he to see an anaconda seize and strangle its prey, in the forests of South America, or a cobra secure his, amidst the ruins of some jungle temple in India? Now, when the same naturalist keeps either these or any other snakes in captivity, what is the object with which he does, and which alone can justify his doing, so? There is--there can be--but one, which is, of course, to study its natural habits--for all others are puerile and contemptible. Is he, then, to shrink, like one who cannot read a tragedy, however great, from that very nature which for years, perhaps, as a part of his daily life, he has wooed and sought after? What, then, justifies him in doing that? Why should he look on whilst a gull, slowly and painfully, does a poor young kittiwake to death? Yet, had I shot that gull, to save that kittiwake, I should have done, in my opinion, an execrable act. I should not have stopped the ways of nature, in this respect, nor could they be stopped, except by a worse slaughter than the one which we would prohibit. I should have officiously saved the life of one kittiwake, and taken a gull's in exchange. But if we are justified in watching a certain act of nature's drama, in the field or the forest, why should we not, also, watch it under conditions which may, alone, make it possible for us to do so? The thing is not the worse because it is thus transported to another spot on earth; and the same snake that in captivity eats but once in a month or so, were it at liberty, would have a much better appetite. Therefore, when we keep snakes, and let them eat in the way that is natural to them, and which, not to the naturalist merely, but to every thinking man, should be full of interest, we do not increase the sum of misery which this earth contains, but, rather, take away from it. What we see, under these conditions, we do not create, any more than if we came upon it by chance, during a walk. We are spectators merely; and spectators of nature I hold that we have a right to be. If not, the very breath of his life is stifled in the naturalist's nostrils. He is strangled. He ceases to exist.

But there is a test and guiding path of reason and morality, here as in other matters. Whether it is right or wrong that a snake should feed in captivity, as it does when at large, depends, in my opinion, on the similarity, or otherwise, of the essential conditions in each case. In nature the victim is at some point taken unawares by the snake, and it is only after that, if at all, that it suffers any pain of apprehension.[18] If, therefore, we put a rat, or a guinea-pig, into a cage so small, or so bare, that its reptile occupant is conspicuously visible, then, if the sight is fraught with any meaning, or disagreeable sensation, for it, we do not treat the creature fairly. We are modifying nature, to the great increase, possibly, of its sufferings, for it may be some time before the snake acts, and if it were not seen, or noticed, till it did, its action might be so sudden as to leave little or no room for previous disquietude. In some way or another, therefore, either by the spaciousness of the cage, or the cover which it provides, or by giving it something to eat, the prey should always be made happy and comfortable during the interim between its being put inside, and the attack, or first offensive movements, of the snake. It should never be allowed to sit shivering, as it were, in the expectation of some dreadful thing--not, that is to say, before the snake obliges it to do so. Another most important point is this. Under nature, and in their own homes, snakes are in possession of their full muscular and vital energies during the time of year at which they are abroad, and take their meals. If they are not so, also, in captivity, then we do a grave wrong to an animal in exposing it to a death which, for this reason, is both more painful and more protracted. As to the poisonous snakes, their poison, I suppose, retains its strength in captivity, and if so--but not otherwise--I can see nothing more dreadful in the death, by this means, of a rat, or guinea-pig, in a cage, than in that of a marmot on the prairies, or of a cavy in the swamps of a Brazilian forest. With the constrictors, however, it is different. The smaller ones, indeed, seem to retain their full vigour, or, if not that, something very like it, for they are capable--as I have myself seen--of killing a rat almost instantaneously. It is different with the huge pythons, or anacondas, which lose their force, together with their appetite, in confinement, so that their languid and clumsy efforts--lasting for a long period--to take the life of their victims, may be compared to those of a drunken headsman with a blunt axe. Manifestly, therefore, to give them such a creature as a goat to mumble, and in such a sort of fern-case as they occupy, is a revolting thing; but I cannot see that a flagrant abuse like this condemns the principle. Were a combined rockery and shrubbery, as large as a good-sized garden, accorded the python, say, and were it in some hot country, the sun of which acted upon its system like Falstaff's "excellent sherris sack"--its own, for instance, at the Cape, or in Durban--then I should recognise no wrong done in introducing a goat or pig (preferably, however, a wild animal) into its sanctum. The conditions would, in that case, be the same, or closely similar, to those which govern under nature, nor can I see that it matters much, in ethics, whether a snake eats its dinner inside, or outside, a paling. If it is wrong to see it do so in the one case, it is wrong in the other, and the contention that it is wrong in either sanctions the principle of an officious interference in the ways of the animal world, which, upon the whole, are better than our ways.

[Footnote 18: But this is begging the question of the so-called power of fascination said to be possessed by some snakes, and for which, I think, there is some evidence.]

There is a very fine line, as it seems to me, between thinking it wrong that a snake in confinement should eat in the way that nature has instructed it to, and wishing to exterminate snakes and various other wild animals, because of the way they have of dining. I may well think so, for the line, to my knowledge, has been overstepped, and here, in these remote islands, there are alarming indications of a campaign to be waged--with no other reason than this--against various poor birds, who are under the same necessity as was Caliban, of eating their dinners.[19] Some, for instance--and they advocate their views in the local papers--wish the gulls to be shot down, on account of the kittiwakes, whilst others would seek vengeance on the skuas for the way in which they persecute the gulls. It seems wonderful that such grotesque views should be held by educated people, but they seem to me to be the same in principle with those which would deny to snakes, in captivity, the natural use of their bodily structure. For myself, I only believe in such a Zoological Gardens as I have tried to sketch,[20] and hope I have foreshadowed. But if the rational study of the habits and life history of the creatures confined there be not the _raison d'être_ of its existence, I, at any rate, can admit no other, and I would as soon think of training spiders not to make webs, as of habituating snakes to the eating of dead meat. An interesting, an instructive thing, truly, to see a creature, formed, by a long process of evolution, to kill in the most marvellous and admirable way, tamely eat something that has already been killed! What wretched vapidity! Like performing dogs, or monkeys, dressed in men's clothes. Where, then, is the soul of the naturalist?

[Footnote 19: Caliban: I must eat my dinner.--_Tempest_, Act i.,